The great pioneers in applying this method to the creation of art books, and in preceding mass production for general consumption, were Honami Kōetsu and Suminokura Soan. The medium quickly gained popularity among artists, and was used to produce small, cheap, art prints as well as books. Despite the appeal of moveable type, however, it was soon decided that the running script style of Japanese writings would be better reproduced using woodblocks, and so woodblocks were once more adopted by 1640 they were once again being used for nearly all purposes. This document is the oldest work of Japanese moveable type printing extant today. An edition of the Confucian Analects was printed in 1598, using a Korean moveable type printing press, at the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei.
Printing was not dominated by the shogunate at this point, however private printers appeared in Kyoto at the beginning of the 17th century, and Toyotomi Hideyori, Ieyasu's primary political opponent, aided in the development and spread of the medium as well. As shogun, Ieyasu would act to promote literacy and learning, leading to the beginnings of the emergence of an educated urban public. He oversaw the creation of 100,000 type-pieces, which were used to print a number of political and historical texts. Four years later, Tokugawa Ieyasu, even before becoming shogun, effected the creation of the first native moveable type, using wooden type-pieces rather than metal. Though the Jesuits operated a movable type printing press in Nagasaki from 1590, printing equipment brought back by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army from Korea in 1593 had far greater influence on the development of the medium. This was the Setsuyō-shū, a two-volume Chinese-Japanese dictionary. It was not until 1590 that the first secular work would be printed in Japan. For centuries, printing was restricted only to the Buddhist sphere, as it was too expensive for mass production, and did not have a receptive, literate public to which such things might be marketed. These are the earliest examples of woodblock printing known, or documented, from Japan.īy the eleventh century, Buddhist temples in Japan were producing their own printed books of sutras, mandalas, and other Buddhist texts and images. These were distributed to temples around the country as thanksgiving for the suppression of the Emi Rebellion of 764. In 764 the Empress Shotuku commissioned one million small wooden pagodas, each containing a small woodblock scroll printed with a Buddhist text ( Hyakumanto Darani). Woodblock-printed books from Chinese Buddhist temples were seen in Japan as early as the eighth century.
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